Jessica set the brush down again. “How long do you think we’ll be here?”
Hamish took his coat off and draped it over the back of a chair. “That’s hard to say,” he replied as he removed his cravat and his stiff collar. “I’ll meet with Hammersmith tomorrow and get his report on the operation out at the Alhambra. I know that he’s hired some men, but I don’t think he has a full crew yet. Once the mine is producing ore at a suitable rate, I’ll leave it in his hands and we can return to San Francisco.”
“But you don’t know how long that will be?”
Hamish shrugged. “How can I? These things take time.”
“You don’t even know for certain that there’s any silver left in the mine,” she ventured, knowing that to cast any doubt on his ultimate success usually annoyed him.
“It’s there,” he snapped. “The Lucky Lizard is producing again, and the reports I’ve received indicate that the Crown Royal is too. So will the Alhambra.”
“If that’s true, why did those mines sit there abandoned for so long?”
“Our methods are better now,” Hamish said. “We can find ore in places that we couldn’t before.”
Jessica didn’t pretend to understand the mining business. She supposed Hamish knew what he was talking about.
He smiled as he came over to stand behind her. “You shouldn’t be worrying about things like that,” he said. He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Let me be concerned about the business. That’s my job.”
She knew his hands wouldn’t stay on her shoulders for long. “And what’s my business?” she asked with a coy smile on her face. The words and the expression were so instinctive, she didn’t even have to think about them.
He slid his hands down her front and parted the robe, as she had done earlier, pulling it back even more so that her shoulders were bared too. Leaning over her, he pressed his lips to one smooth, sleek shoulder as he filled his palms with the firm globes of her breasts.
“Your business is to make your husband happy,” he said as he caressed her.
She closed her eyes for a second. It was a job, all right—but thankfully, she was good at it.
Outside, the shooting had stopped. Jessica hadn’t really noticed when that happened.
By the time Frank reached the undertaking parlor, Claude Langley had already cleaned and bandaged the bullet graze in Professor Burton’s side. The professor had a hangdog expression on his face when Frank came in.
“I’m a fool, an utter fool,” he announced. “Brawling over some doxie, then getting shot over her.”
“Having woman trouble doesn’t make you a fool, Professor,” Frank assured him. “It just makes you a normal hombre.”
“Oh? I’ll wager you never had such bad luck with females, Marshal.”
Frank’s jaw tightened as he thought about the women in his life. His first love had been a girl back in Texas, where he’d grown up. Mercy, as beautiful as her name. But her father had forced them apart, and even though Frank had met her again years later, to this day he wasn’t sure if Mercy’s daughter Victoria was actually his child, although he liked to think that she was. And at least Mercy was still alive….
Later, he had married Vivian, and again circumstances had kept them from being together. Without even knowing about it, he’d had a son with her, the young man known as Conrad Browning. Vivian hadn’t survived her reconciliation with Frank; outlaws had gunned her down. The circumstances that had brought him to Buckskin in the first place had been related to that tragic incident.
Then there had been Dixie, sweet, courageous Dixie. She had married Frank only to die at the hands of lawless men, just like Vivian. That had been enough to make Frank wonder if he carried a curse with him. Maybe the vengeful spirits of all the men who had met death in front of the flaming barrel of his Colt were conspiring to insure that his every attempt at happiness ended in tragedy. In the past few years, the only woman he’d been close to who hadn’t died was Roanne Williamson, in the town of Santa Rosa down along the border between Texas and Mexico.
Frank was enough of a pragmatist not to really believe in curses, though. Despite the settling influence of civilization, in many places the West was still wild. It was still a frontier—although that frontier was shrinking—and that meant plenty of danger for anyone brave enough to live there. Tragedy didn’t dog his trail any more than it did those of lots of other men.
He became aware that Professor Burton was looking at him, waiting for a response to his comment. Frank shrugged and said, “You could be right, Professor.” That was the easiest way out. Frank Morgan had never been one to seek the easiest trail, but in this case, it seemed like the right thing to do.
“You can be sure that I shall avoid that woman’s establishment in the future,” Burton said.
“Don’t go making promises you can’t keep, Professor,” Langley said with a smile.
“But man should be the master of his own desires, don’t you think?”
“Hasn’t ever happened before on a consistent basis, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden,” Langley replied. “Don’t see any reason to think things are going to change now.”
Frank said, “I’ll leave you two to discuss philosophy, if you’re of a mind to. I need to see if my deputies ran into any more trouble making the rounds.”
Langley rubbed his hands together. “And I need to get to that corpse, I guess. Want to give me a hand, Professor?”
Burton paled even more than normal. “I think I’ve seen enough of the results of violence for one night, thank you.”
Frank chuckled as he left the undertaking parlor. He walked back to the marshal’s office, and by the time he got there, both Catamount Jack and Clint Farnum were there too.
“Get the rest of the rounds made all right?” Frank asked as he hung his hat on one of the nails beside the door.
Clint nodded. “Everything’s locked up for the night, except for the saloons, of course. They’re still going strong.” The little gunfighter was perched on the edge of the table that served as Frank’s desk. His legs were short enough that his booted feet didn’t quite reach the floor.
“Claude’s helper brung the wagon and we loaded that fella’s body onto it,” Jack put in. “I reckon he got back all right with it. I didn’t go with him.”
“Yeah, it got there, from the way Langley was acting when I left,” Frank said with a nod.
Clint grinned and said, “There have been two killings since I got here. Is Buckskin always so exciting, Frank?”
“It’s too exciting, if you ask me. But that’s the way it is when a town is booming like this one, I reckon.”
“Businesses doing well, are they?”
Frank nodded again. “Leo Benjamin has supplies freighted in from Virginia City at least twice a week, and he still can’t keep stock on his shelves. A couple of other mercantiles have come in to take up some of the slack. The Silver Baron and the other saloons make money hand over fist. The blacksmith shop and Hillman’s Livery are doing fine. The boardinghouse is full, and most of the abandoned houses and cabins have been claimed, at least until the rightful owners come along and reclaim them, if they ever do.”
“Like that fella Munro did with the old hotel.”
“Yeah. He probably doesn’t need the money, but if he wanted to, he could turn the place into a hotel again. All the rooms would be rented in a week or less, I’d say.”
“So you’ve got money flowing in, and pretty soon silver flowing out, I reckon. The mines are producing, aren’t they?”
“The Lucky Lizard and the Crown Royal are,” Frank said. He didn’t know for sure how much ore Garrett Claiborne’s crew was taking out of the Browning mine, but they were finding some color, Claiborne had reported. “I don’t know about the Alhambra.”